Counting Sheep
by cupid-painted-blind
Summary: Love is a shield, not a sword. — An attack from the Lost Ones leaves both Hook and Emma much worse for wear, and Hook presumed dead... until Emma wakes up, at least, and insists on going back for the one person who came back for her.
1. i need some sleep

_I need some sleep, it can't go on like this_  
_I tried counting sheep, but there's one I always miss  
everyone says I'm getting down too low  
everyone says_ _you just gotta let it go_

you just gotta let it go.

.

Killian chose not to remember the last time he'd slept through the night (_three days after her death, so strung-out and strung-up and mad with every kind of pain, collapsing into the too-big and too-cold bed to fall into what he had hoped would be a dreamless sleep_) and, judging by the color of Emma's face when she joined him on deck, she had made the same choice sometime recently.

When she'd started hanging around at night, it would be several hours after everyone else had gone to bed before she'd turn up, but over the past few weeks, she'd been coming up sooner and sooner, and this time apparently hadn't even _tried_ to sleep first.

He wanted to ask, but he wasn't sure he wanted to know.

It was more than her son's kidnapping, and more than her ex-lover's death, but those reasons were enough for everyone else and he couldn't quite pin down why they _weren't_ enough for _him_. Half of him said it was just wishful thinking — that he could have some insight into her that others, who had known her longer, didn't — but the other half remembered that every time he'd made a guess about things she wasn't saying, he'd been right.

He glanced sideways at her; she was standing at the railing only a handful of feet away from him, hands clutching the guardrail like a lifeline, eyes distant and glancing from him to the sea and back, unconsciously biting her lip.

"What is it?" he asked, almost in spite of himself. She turned to him, expression never changing, so he went on. "You came here to ask me something. What is it?"

She stared at him and through him for another moment, mouth half-open, before turning back to the sea. "Would…" she started hesitantly, but paused for almost long enough to make him think she'd lost her nerve. "If someone had… had told you… God, this is _stupid_," she sighed, running a hand over her face and refusing to look at him. "I don't even know why — it's not like it changes anything, I just — "

"If someone had told me what?" he interrupted sharply, and she took a deep breath.

"If someone had told you that you were… getting in the way of — of Milah's destiny," she started again, and he tried not to be surprised that she even remembered her name, "that she… couldn't become who she was fated to be as long as you were there… would you have left?"

He blinked, and answered before he could think about it. "What kind of excuse is _that?_" he asked incredulously, and with more than a little contempt. "I was under the impression that the _meaning_ of destiny is that it will happen _regardless_ of circumstance, including people in your life."

She almost managed to hide her flinch, and he cursed himself internally.

"But if you were… if it meant you were a danger to her," she offered.

He wondered who she was trying to convince; he wondered if she really wanted the truth.

"I would've stayed to fight it, help her if I could," he finally answered honestly. "There is _nothing _anyone could have told me that would've made me abandon Milah."

"Right," she said softly. "Because you loved her."

There was something under her words he didn't want to examine, but heard anyway. "Aye," he replied, matching her volume. "Because I loved her."

Emma fell silent.

(Maybe he should have lied.)

"So that was his reasoning, was it?" he asked in a low voice, and she laughed mirthlessly.

"Yeah," she answered, voice taut, "yeah, that was… that's why he did it. I just — I wanted to know _why_, for so long I wanted to know why and then I find out and it…"

"Lacks something substantial," he finished for her. She ran her hand over her face again, visibly shaking.

"It's _stupid_, this whole thing, it's so — so _stupid_."

"You keep saying that," he drawled, "but I've yet to hear you say anything remotely of the sort."

She was quiet again for a moment, leaning heavily on the railing, as though it was the only thing standing between her and utter despair. "I just…" she breathed. "I came up with all these possibilities," she explained, barely above a whisper, "over the years, maybe he'd done it because — because someone had forced him to, or had threatened me, or… or maybe he really _was_ just a worthless, greedy liar, or maybe…" she trailed off. "Even now, I thought — well, it's a crappy reason, but he _thought_ he was doing the right thing, he _meant_ well, and he said… maybe he really had…"

She didn't finish the sentence, but didn't need to.

"I thought," she whispered, and then caught herself, "I _wanted_ to think — he — I hadn't — " She couldn't seem to make herself say the words, and for once he couldn't tell what it was she was trying to hide. He waited for her to continue, and regretted it when she did. "But I was wrong," she went on, voice deliberately even. "I was twenty-eight before anyone really loved me."

He watched her for a moment that lasted just too long to be played off as casual.

"It isn't _you_," he said finally, startling her, but continued before she could comment. "Whatever his and everyone else's reasons for leaving you are, I assure you, it has nothing to do with you. It's _their_ failure, not yours."

The look she gave him stung something in Killian that he thought he'd buried centuries ago. "Thanks," she said flatly, unconvincingly.

"I mean that," he snapped, genuinely annoyed. "You're a remarkable woman, if I could — " he cut himself off at the look on her face — simultaneously _don't_ and _please _— and decided not to finish that sentence. "If he couldn't see that, he was blind," he said instead, a bit lamely.

She turned back to the water. "I don't know why I care," she breathed. "It was _years_ ago, and he — it shouldn't _be_ like this — it's all in the past, I can't do anything about it, I — "

"You hate him, and yet you still love him," he said, a statement of fact rather than any kind of question. "You never got a satisfactory reason out of him, and he died before you could make him give you one, or hurt him like he hurt you. He died before you could make him understand the _magnitude_ of his mistake," he went on, deliberately not looking at her, volume dropping in the vague hope that she wouldn't hear, "and he died before you could forgive him. It's left you hollow, and you've nothing to fill that space with."

For a moment, she didn't react; when she did, it was with a breathless laugh. "How — " she choked, finally turning to face him, no longer using the guardrail like a crutch. "What _happened_ to you, how do you _know_ that?"

He'd hit the mark, perhaps a little _too_ perfectly.

There wasn't anything for it but the truth, a tale he'd only told once before.

He ran his hand through his hair and turned away, seeking solace in the water like she'd been doing all night. "My mother was a noblewoman," he explained quietly, "and my father… well, I was _led_ to believe he was a merchant, but the point is, I was illegitimate and my mother was the only person in my family who didn't openly _loathe_ me. I was ten when she died, and at her funeral, my grandfather told me I no longer had a home." He laughed a little in memory of the cruelty, and the irony in how much like his grandfather he had unwillingly become.

"But I was spared," he went on brightly, "by my father. He took me in, told me that we would travel the realms together, and I… I had always dreamt of adventure, and of him, and I thought… like you, I thought he loved me," he said finally, with more self-loathing than she'd used. "I later discovered that my grandfather had paid him a _rather_ large sum to take me off their hands, and when he was out of the country and I was of no further use to him, he left me at a brothel and disappeared.

"I didn't see him for five years," he said, looking at the water, sight unseeing. "When I found him again, it was the night before he was hanged — murder, theft, treason… other crimes," he muttered darkly. "He begged me to help him escape, once again he said we could be a family. I refused."

He paused, unable to look at her; Killian — _Hook_ — had done a lot of terrible things, but wasn't sure he'd done anything worse than this.

"Did you regret it?" she asked. He took a deep breath.

"Not immediately," he replied honestly. "You have to understand, he had hurt me deeply, left me to die in the streets mere _weeks_ after the death of the only person who'd loved me. I blamed him for…_everything_, I felt he deserved it. No," he said thoughtfully, and a little bitterly, "I didn't regret it for a week, until I went around to the city square again and found…" he hesitated, unwilling to remember. "They had left his body on the gallows. A warning to other criminals." He heard her wince; clearly, she could imagine what a week-old body on a hangman's noose looked like. "If there is one image I could burn out of my memory," he murmured, "it would be that one.

"The point is," he continued sharply, more of a reprimand to himself than anything else, "I realized _then_, too late, that what I wanted had never been his _death_. I wanted to make him _answer_ for what he'd done, _explain_ to me why he thought me so worthless, _force_ him to respect me, love me, _want_ me… and I let him die without getting any of it. He _owed_ me more," he said, perhaps a bit viciously. "He _owed_ me a reason, or at least half a moment's concern, but at the wrong moment, I chose petty vengeance over mercy and because of it, I'll never know the truth."

It would become, he thought but refused to point out, a habit.

"You were… fifteen, sixteen?" she asked slowly, and he glanced at her.

"Fifteen."

Emma nodded, glancing away. "I was adopted as a baby," she said quietly, apparently apropos of nothing, "but when I was three, they had their own kid and sent me back to the orphanage. I… If it helps," she said, glancing at his hand on the railing, her own twitching like she might've wanted to take it, "if it had been _me_, facing _them_, in your position, at fifteen… I think I would've done the same thing."

Neither of them spoke for a long moment; he wasn't sure why she'd opened up to him, except that maybe she was going mad with the strain and the grief and the _hurt_ and the fake smiles, and, like she'd said, they understood each other — and he might have been the only one who did — and more than that, he wasn't sure how she'd react in the morning. Draw away, like she had on the beanstalk? Pretend this conversation hadn't happened?

"What is it about us, that makes everyone leave?" she asked, voice hollow. "What's _wrong_ with us?"

He laughed harshly. "Well, I'm a heartless bastard who's done it to himself," he admitted. "You… you've simply been _spectacularly_ unlucky, I suppose. _I_ deserve it, _you_ don't."

"You don't deserve it," she said quietly, "and you're not heartless. If you were heartless, you wouldn't even _be_ here, and if you deserved it, _I_ wouldn't be."

He refused to take heart at her words.

"You'd be the first to think that in a very long time."

"Maybe," she replied simply. "But for what it's worth, I still think you're wrong about yourself."

He would like to be. _She_ would have wanted him to be. He had tried to be, in the past, and failed, for the same reason his father had failed.

The last time someone had put this much faith in him was when Milah had thrown the bean, knowing he would catch it and keep it safe. When Milah had begged him to take her back home so she could reunite with her son, so they could be a family.

When Milah had wanted him to be her son's father.

"No," he said darkly, trying to banish the memories of how _very_ wrong she'd been. "I'm not."

She looked at him like she could see right through him, and laid a hand over his. "You can be," she murmured. "You're off to a good start," she continued after a moment, a little louder, removing her hand and stepping back like she had suddenly realized how close she was to him. The absence was sharp and cold, and colder because he was half-trapped in memories too sweet to be anything but poison. "You've helped _me_."

He tried, and failed, to smile.

"That's not much."

She held his gaze for a moment that went on _just_ too long to be ignored, before finally — and abruptly, like she had once again realized where she was and who she was looking at — turning away and making for the officer's quarters. "It's enough, to me," she said without looking back at him, and left before he could reply.

"It shouldn't be," he said anyway, to no one.


	2. my manic and i

_and since last that we parted, and last that I saw him_  
_down by a river, silent and hardened_  
_morning was mocking us, blood hit the sky_

_and I'm sorry, young man, I cannot be your friend_  
I don't believe in a fairytale end.

.

In a stroke of _breathtaking_ irony so profound it made her wince, Emma had discovered that she _hated _Neverland.

"Out of curiosity," she growled, swatting at a low-hanging vine, "is there _anything_ in this damn place that _isn't_ trying to kill us?"

"I'm reasonably certain the beach has no personal vendetta against you," Hook replied dryly, and she glared at him. "But then, it _was_ high tide."

"Screw that beach," she said, with altogether too much feeling. "There is _no_ reason for a crab to _ever_ be that size."

Hook, to his credit, at least attempted to hide his laughter.

She was trying. She really was.

He had, in a show of rare grace and tact, not brought up anything regarding the previous night's conversation, or, indeed, given any indication that it had happened at all, but she still felt uncomfortably… exposed around him. It would have been easier if she'd thought he felt the same vulnerability, but he didn't seem to mind the fact that she apparently knew more about him than anyone else alive.

But it was different. He had been abandoned by his _father_, she had been abandoned by a _lover_; Hook's situation could only ever happen once, but Emma's —

She couldn't run this time.

"I think we should take a break," Mary Margaret said, glancing up. "It's almost noon."

Hook paused, looking around critically, before nodding. "Not a bad idea," he agreed, albeit with some reluctance, like something about it was bothering him but he wouldn't say.

"What is it?" she asked in a low voice, startling him a bit. She had to admit, something _did_ feel off, and the fact that the group had been forced to — for reasons involving covering more ground and the desire for everyone _not_ to kill everyone else — split into two didn't help. Little though she liked Regina and Gold, she would have felt safer with one or both of them there.

He glanced at her. "Something isn't right," he murmured.

Emma looked around, up into the trees and through the forest, but it was so thick that all she could really see were shadows, and the silence and the heat were so oppressive that — she paused.

The silence?

"Where are the birds?" she asked slowly, and Hook turned to her, something approaching horror passing over his face.

"_Move_," he hissed, motioning for Mary Margaret to join them. "There should be a stream not far from here, we can get our backs to it — " but it was too late.

They appeared all at once and out of _nowhere_ — clearly having realized the group had wised up to their presence — a small cacophony of young boys and girls in warpaint and tattered clothes, wielding an array of weapons from knives to swords to bows; one girl, who Emma found herself perhaps unreasonably wary of, had a long, thin tube that looked familiar, something she'd seen in a documentary somewhere.

_Darts_, she thought distantly. Hook had said the Lost Ones used a variety of deadly poisons, like tribes in rainforests with their blowguns and poisoned darts, could kill a grown man in less than an hour.

And all she had was a thick knife. She pulled it out and held it in a reverse grip, mind going back to the times she'd been homeless, living on the streets, sometimes in worse sides of town, where it was steal to eat and fight to live; kill or incapacitate.

Mary Margaret had drawn her bow, but they were surrounded and — and — and they were _children_, just _children_.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Hook draw his sword, subtly stepping around so he was the third point of a triangle with the two women, and, for a moment, nothing happened.

And then he showed up.

He was small, wiry, twirling a wicked-looking sword in one hand and wearing a wicked grin, eyes locked on Hook — and that, more than anything, told her who he was. He couldn't have been more than twelve.

"Well, this is interesting," he said cheerfully, starting to circle them like a vulture, or maybe a shark. "Captain Hook returns to Neverland. _Did_ you kill your crocodile after all?" he asked mockingly.

"What do you want?" Hook countered, tense but otherwise (outwardly, at least) unafraid.

"You're in our territory," Pan replied, and Hook tilted his head.

"Are we?" he asked evenly. "You'd claim territory this close to the beach?"

"I claim _all_ of Neverland," Pan snapped. "It's _mine_, and you're trespassing. What brings you here?"

"A lovely jaunt through the woods," Hook answered coldly, and a bit nastily. "It is _such_ a nice day."

"Ha-ha," he deadpanned. "I _meant_, what brings you back to Neverland? And off your precious ship, too, I wonder if anyone's there guarding it…"

He didn't rise to the bait. "I'm not a particular fan of growing old and dying," he said, still cold and vaguely mocking. "Wanted to celebrate my victory eternally."

"You're lying," Pan said, matching Hook's chilly tone. "What are the women doing here?"

"_Well_," Hook laughed, sounding much more like himself, "that's something you're a bit too young to understand." Both Emma and Mary Margaret glanced at him without amusement, but she had to give him credit — he wasn't giving any ground, and seemed to have no fear about Pan knowing it.

"Fine," Pan replied, glancing around to the Lost Ones, "if you won't tell us when we ask _nicely_, we'll have to get a little… _mean_."

_Shit_, Emma thought. _Here it comes_.

"When I give the word," Hook murmured, "run, back to the beach."

"Yeah, _that'll_ work," she replied desperately, eyes still on the girl with the blowgun.

If he had anything else to say, he didn't get the chance to say it; Pan gave a signal, and all hell broke loose.

Emma made straight for the blowgun — arrows they could handle, swords they could deflect, but poisoned darts were something none of them were prepared for — narrowly dodging the first one she shot at her. She spared only a second's glance behind her to make sure it hadn't hit anyone (it hadn't), and lashed out with her knife, catching the bamboo rod around the middle and nearly knocking it from the girl's hand.

Brawling was something Emma was intimately familiar with, and she knew one very important thing: people who fought with ranged weapons didn't do well in close quarters. With that in mind, she crowded the girl, too close for her to shoot her darts, slashing at her hands and only missing by a margin when the girl leaped to the side.

She was forced to duck when the girl, clearly desperate, swung the blowgun itself at her head; she came up with her knife right past her hand and jerked it sharply to the side, finally succeeding at what she'd come here to do — the blowgun split down the middle and fell out of her hands.

But she had underestimated the girl's desperation, and gasped when she felt a sharp pain in the side of her neck.

The girl had pulled out one of her darts and stabbed her with it.

Emma staggered backward, ripping the dart out and throwing it aside, but it was too late — pain, the likes of which she'd never experienced, threaded across her nerves, chased through her body by a slower-spreading and much more alarming numbness.

With what strength she had left, she decked the girl across the face as hard as she could, dropping her like a stone, and stumbled around to face her teammates.

Just before she fell, she met Hook's eyes, and mouthed one word.

.

He turned in time to see Emma jerk a dart out of her neck, and his blood ran cold. For a moment, he was completely frozen — dangerous, with Pan so close — as she knocked out the girl she'd been fighting and turned to him, already staggering, face white. She met his eyes and mouthed something with two syllables.

_Henry_.

The sound that came out of his throat wasn't human; it startled Mary Margaret, who turned in time to see Emma collapse, and she made a similar noise, foregoing the fight entirely and running to her daughter's side in open panic.

Killian knew the poison on those darts, knew how fast it would kill, knew how painful, knew her fate.

But he never went anywhere without at least one ace up his sleeve.

He slashed upwards at Pan with all his strength, startling the boy and breaking his sword in two, then cracked him on the head with the hilt to stun him, and ran to Emma's side.

Likewise, the Lost Ones made for their (temporarily) fallen leader, giving them a moment's reprieve.

"Emma, Emma," Mary Margaret was crying, "look at me, Emma, sweetie, wake up, Emma, _wake up_."

He tugged at his necklace, at a tiny vial hidden behind the skull; the antidote to the poison on the darts was made from a plant so rare that it might have been extinct, and, as far as he knew, only one dose remained in this world or any other.

"Here," he snapped, shoving it at Mary Margaret and looking behind them, to where Pan was beginning to stir. "Pour it in the wound, then get her to the ship."

Mary Margaret looked at him, eyes wide and wild.

"It's the antidote, it's all there is," he hissed. "If you don't give it to her now, it won't be enough and there _isn't_ any more. _Take it_."

She snapped out of it and snatched the vial, opening it with visibly shaking hands and poured the clear liquid onto the tiny puncture — surrounded by a spreading circle of bruising, and then blackening, flesh — on Emma's neck. It didn't seem to have an immediate effect, but then, it wouldn't.

Right?

The last dose of this he'd used, he'd gotten there faster, it hadn't been…

"Can you carry her?" he asked in a low voice, hand tightening on his sword.

"_Can_ has nothing to do with it," she replied firmly. "I _will_."

"Get her to the ship," he repeated, glancing back at the Lost Ones. "I'll meet you there."

For a second, their eyes met and he could see the realization fall over her face; he schooled his into blankness.

They both knew it was a lie.

"Hook, we _need_ — " she started fervently, but he cut her off.

"_Go_," he hissed, helping her pull Emma's limp form onto her back. "I _swear_, I'll meet you on the ship."

He heard _and_ felt the approach of the now-undoubtedly-infuriated Pan and turned as he rose, sword lashing out, but the boy had anticipated this and ducked under it, coming up to stab him with a small dagger. He almost managed to dodge it, but took a glancing blow across his side.

The triumph on Pan's face told him everything, if the lancing, disproportionate pain in his abdomen hadn't: more poison. But at least, he thought, it _probably_ wasn't the same one that was on the darts — like its antidote, it was too rare to spread around so carelessly.

Small favors; he had some time.

He glanced behind him — Mary Margaret had vanished into the trees, unheeded by the Lost Ones, who were all circling like vultures to watch the fight, cheering their leader on.

They always loved seeing him and Pan battle each other, especially when there was blood already in the water; they were feral, bloodthirsty creatures only a step removed from animals. He snarled at Pan, slashing wide with his sword and following through from the other side with his hook, in an almost-successful bid to disarm the boy — but his reflexes were sharp, and he caught the dagger before he it hit the ground, twisting it into the reverse grip Emma had been using and hacking at him again.

The pain in his side was fast getting worse, approaching unbearable.

If he couldn't end this now, he couldn't end this at all.

And worse, Pan knew it too.

He came at him again with the dagger, aiming for the heart, but Killian caught his arm with his hook and forced it away from him, lunging to run the boy through. It would've worked if he hadn't been poisoned, if he wasn't slowing down so quickly.

As it was, Pan had time to slip away, and with him went his last chance.

Killian staggered — _no_, he thought, it was too early, too _soon_, Mary Margaret hadn't had time to get back to the ship yet, he _had_ to hold on… or at least hold them here.

"It's a coward who resorts to poison, you know," he sneered, trying to rile him up and ignoring the hypocrisy, and pressed his arm into his side, fighting back a gasp at the shock of blinding pain.

But he _wasn't_ going numb, and while, immediately, that was a curse, it said good things about the long-term. All the _truly_ deadly poisons attacked the nerves and shut them down; excruciating pain, he could live through, if the dose wasn't too high.

"Says the man with his dying breath," Pan countered, gloating, lording his power over him.

"So what happens now?" he asked hoarsely, trying, and failing, to rise to his feet. He shouldn't have made the attempt — it made Pan's grin widen.

"I'll start with a souvenir," he replied, and for one heart-stopping moment he thought he meant to take his other hand, but instead, Pan took his hook, holding it up for all the cheering children to see. "Guess you can't really call yourself Captain Hook without this, can you?" he taunted, kicking him in his wounded side and nearly pulling a cry of pain out of him. "Out of curiosity, what_ is_ your real name? Actually, no," he said, voice turning from mocking to cold. "I don't care to know. I want you to die _without_ a name, no one left who remembers who you _really_ were."

He spat at Pan's feet, a sad attempt at pride, falling forward to support himself on his right arm, drawing in ragged breaths.

They hadn't gone very far into the forest, and they'd made slow progress; Mary Margaret might have made it to the beach, or at least she had enough of a head start so they wouldn't catch up to her.

It would have to be enough.

Dimly, he heard one of the Lost Ones ask what to do with him; Pan smirked.

"Leave him," he answered, walking away. "Let the wild animals have a meal."

And for a moment that might have been a few seconds or might have been a few hours, his vision went black and he fell into blessed senselessness. When he came to, he was laying in the same place, alone, and the pain had only increased, to the point that it made him retch.

He made another go at getting to his feet, and succeeded this time, for a given definition of "success," using a tree trunk to drag himself into a semi-standing position.

He wasn't sure what had woken him up; maybe some deep, previously-untapped well of stubbornness, or maybe…

Killian _had_ to know she was all right, she'd made it to the ship and the antidote had worked and she was alive and well and her last word _wouldn't_ be her son's name in a forlorn whisper; he _had_ to get to the beach, to the ship; he had _promised_. Even though he hadn't bothered with keeping promises in a long time.

But Pan was right: he couldn't exactly call himself Captain Hook without the item itself, which left him as nothing more than Killian Jones, and Killian Jones had _always_ kept his promises.

Luckily, the trees were thick enough on the other side of the clearing for him to use them as a series of crutches, making a slow, faltering path toward the beach. It seemed like an exercise in futility.

It was well into the night before he was close enough to hear the waves breaking onshore, but the poison was — he couldn't remember which way it was to the ship, he could barely remember why it was so important that he get there — and the pain had gone _past_ blinding and had reached the point that he almost didn't feel it anymore, like water so cold it burned.

_I tried_, he thought, the most pathetic two words in any language, _I tried_.

And he collapsed, falling forward and rolling several times, ending up face-down in grassy sand, and gave in to the black.


	3. scratch

_and I've been counting on nothing, _  
_but he keeps giving me his word  
and I am tired of hearing myself speak  
do you get weary, do you ever get weak?_

how do you dream when you can't fall asleep?

.

Her mouth was full of cotton.

Emma was choking on it, dense and powdery and extending all the way down her throat so completely it made her suffocate. She opened her mouth, hand automatically reaching up to start pulling the stuff out of her throat, but another hand caught hers before she could.

"You're awake, oh god, you're awake," a woman's voice was crying, clutching her hand in both of hers. "Emma, talk to me, sweetie, _please_." The voice cracked on the last word and the hands tightened, and she _knew_ that voice, if she could just…

With great difficulty, she opened her eyes; she was in a dimly-lit, wood-paneled room on a large, soft bed, and the woman at her side had short black hair and tears on her face. She tried to say that she was okay, more or less, but couldn't talk around the suffocating cotton all up in her throat — which she was starting to realize, as she slowly woke up, wasn't really cotton, it was just that her mouth was bone-dry.

She indicated to her throat and the woman glanced behind her, to someone else. "What is it?" she asked fervently, and Emma tried once again to speak, but only got out a hoarse whisper.

"Water."

Whoever else was in the room immediately left, returning only a moment later with a cup and sitting on the bed beside where the woman — _mother_, the word _mother_ came to mind — was kneeling on the floor, still clutching her hand.

"Can you sit up?" the man asked, holding the cup out to her as she struggled to do so. Her mother helped her, finally letting go of her hand to put an arm around her and pull her up into a sitting position.

It was like the worst hangover it was possible to _ever_ experience. She couldn't even remember her own _name_.

She tried to figure out what the hell was going on; there was a dull pain in her neck, that had to mean something.

"What happened?" she croaked, blinking heavily.

"You were hit with one of their darts," her mother replied, arms tight around her shoulders. "It… I don't know what kind of poison was on that thing, but it was… you barely survived. And that was _with_ the antidote Hook gave you."

Hook? How would a hook give her — she squeezed her eyes shut and held a hand to her head. It was starting to come back to her: a forest, a feral girl, a man with panic in his eyes.

_Mary Margaret_, she remembered, that was the woman's name, Mary Margaret, _mother_. And the man on the bed looking at her anxiously wasn't the same one who'd been at the scene, but she knew him, too, if his name would come back to her.

It was just so fuzzy, and she felt like her bones were filled with lead.

She ran a hand over her face, trying to clear her head. David — _that_ was his name — and Hook — a _person_, not an object, he had given her an antidote. Mary Margaret had been in the forest, and had stayed at her bedside for however long she'd been asleep. But where was her bedside, and how did she get from the forest to it?

"Where am I?" she asked, trying to place the room, but it was totally unfamiliar.

Mary Margaret glanced at David. "Hook's cabin," she replied hesitantly, and when Emma continued to stare at her in confusion, she went on, in poorly-concealed and increasing panic. "On the ship. In Neverland. Are you okay?"

"I will be," she answered, running her hand over her face again. "I couldn't remember anything when I woke up, but it's coming back." What the _hell_ kind of poison had she been dosed with? She wanted to ask, but she doubted that Mary Margaret would know.

Hook would know, she thought suddenly, and wasn't sure why she knew that.

_The Lost Ones make use of a great variety of poisons_.

Emma rubbed her temple, trying to stave off a headache. She needed to sleep. Hook's bed was comfortable — why did that feel weird to think? — and her parents were right here. It was safe. Why did safe matter?

"I think…" she started thickly, "I should go back to sleep for a while."

"Okay," Mary Margaret said softly, once again taking her hand. "We'll be here when you wake up."

She stared for a moment.

Why did that sentence make her want to cry?

.

The next time she woke up, the amnesia had passed — Hook _had_ said that the nastiest poisons would attack the nervous system, make the brain misfire, it had probably just been an effect of that. It was scary as hell all the same.

Emma _did not like_ feeling like a stranger in her own skin.

True to her promise, Mary Margaret was still at her bedside, still holding her hand; David was sitting on the floor beside her, leaning back against the bed. They appeared to be dozing, but woke up quickly when she started to stir.

"You're awake," her mother said muzzily, blinking several times and sitting up. "I didn't mean to fall asleep."

"It's okay," she replied, laughing a little. "It probably gets kind of boring."

"Well, yeah, but," David started, and didn't need to finish: _but leaving you alone wasn't an option_.

"Are you… all right?" Mary Margaret asked slowly, and she nodded slowly, sighing and sitting up, swinging her legs over the bed.

"Yeah, I think it was an aftereffect of the stuff on that dart," she said — their relief was palpable. "Hook said the really bad ones could mess with your head."

"And that _was_ one of the really bad ones," Mary Margaret said gravely. "You… it happened in less than a _minute_, I… I really thought…"

"You said something about Hook giving me an antidote?" she asked; her memories of the last time she'd woken up were fuzzy, and she wasn't sure if it was because she was remembering them in a haze or she was remembering the haze she'd been in. For some reason, Mary Margaret glanced sharply to David.

That was ominous.

"You're probably thirsty," he said, standing up and walking to the door. He glanced back at the threshold, but didn't say anything, like he was just… memorizing the moment.

They had been really terrified that they had lost her, hadn't they?

"Okay, so what's the bad news you wanted him out of the room for?" she asked bluntly, unwilling to focus on the image of her parents' fear. Mary Margaret winced.

"Hook did… give you the antidote. And he said he'd keep them occupied, that I should… get you to the ship, and he would meet us here."

"And he hasn't," she inferred, a strange detachment settling over her. "There could be a lot of reasons for that. I mean, he's, like, the ultimate survivor."

"Yeah," Mary Margaret said slowly. "But… Pan had a dagger, and he… got him. I don't know how bad, I didn't stick around, but if it was poisoned…"

"You said he had the antidote," she said; the creeping detachment began to feel more like dread.

Mary Margaret hesitated, looking down and toying with the sheet. Finally, she took a deep breath and turned back to her.

"He only had one dose," she said quietly.

Emma blinked. "It might not have been the same poison," she countered, clamping down hard on a fear she didn't want to feel and _really_ didn't want to name.

"No," her mother conceded with a reluctant shrug, "it might not… but you've been out for over a day, and he still hasn't…"

There was a finality in her tone that Emma didn't like one bit. She tried to come up with another reason he might have stayed in the forest but came up short — after this long, it didn't matter _what_ poison had been on the dagger, he'd still —

He was gone.

And he wasn't coming back.

She tried not to care but —

_Whatever his and everyone else's reasons for leaving you are, I assure you, it has nothing to do with you. It's their failure, not yours._

— but he'd used the antidote on _her_, he'd given it to _her_ and stayed behind so _she_ could get to safety and _dammit_, didn't he _know_ how that worked? No one who _ever_ stayed behind to "hold them off" _ever _came back, it was — it was a story older than _time_, it was _stupid_.

"Have we looked for him?" she asked in a deliberately-even tone, trying to push the unwarranted feeling of abandonment and betrayal down.

He _said_ he'd meet them here, that was what Mary Margaret said, he'd _said_ he would meet them on the ship, and he hadn't and — he'd _promised_ — he'd _lied_. He _had_ to be okay. It wasn't — it wasn't_ fair_.

Why was it that every time she opened up to someone, they died?

_You've simply been spectacularly unlucky, I suppose._

"Regina did, or… well, she _said_ she did," Mary Margaret answered. "Gold… isn't gonna lift a finger to save Hook — Emma!" she cried, as she stood up, pausing for a moment as the blood rushed to her head from the sudden movement.

"We're going to look for him," she said firmly. "We _need_ his help, and he's — I told him he could be one of us and I _meant_ that. I don't leave my — my allies for dead."

It was a good enough excuse, but she got the strange feeling that her mother saw through it all the same.

"It's still night," she said, placing a hand on her shoulder. "It isn't safe."

"It's a lot _less_ safe out there for a single, injured person," she snapped, ignoring the shaking in her hands and looking for her dagger.

"Emma, do you really think he's — "

"There's a _chance_," she growled. "And even if he is de— " the word stuck in her throat " — he deserves better than to just… be left out there."

For years, she had been completely alone, in a dangerous job, and for years, when she would get a little drunk and a little morbid, she would think that — if one of her marks killed her — no one would come to her funeral, if there even was one at all. It was a _terrible_ feeling, knowing that your life was so meaningless that no one would notice, or move, or inconvenience themselves in any way if you suddenly died.

When she was twenty-six, she had found an obituary for an old woman who had no one in the "she is survived by" bit, but there would be a cheap funeral at a local church because the person who had found her — even though he didn't know her — thought her family might show up. Emma had gone, in solidarity with the woman she saw herself becoming.

Someone told her later that the woman died alone because she had been a heartless old bitch, impossible to please and unbearably demanding, who had alienated everyone who had ever cared about her. That she had done it to herself.

But to Emma's mind, _nobody_ deserved that. It didn't _matter_ what they'd done.

Hook — for everything he'd done, for all his faults, all his sins — he'd _tried_. And he'd saved her life, and he'd come back for her when no one else ever had, and he'd listened, and he'd understood her, and he'd come to a dangerous place to help her save her son when he had nothing to gain from it and everything to lose, and he'd honestly, seriously, really _tried_ to make things right.

That was worth something, even if only to her.

"We're gonna find him," she said sharply as she marched out into the night, pulling her coat on. "We'd do it for anyone else."

Mary Margaret and David, who had been standing awkwardly beside the door (presumably since he'd left the room), stared at her for a moment, then glanced at each other.

"She has a point," Mary Margaret said, and David nodded.

"Let me get my gun."


	4. before the sun

_so before the sun crawls in through the shades, before we remember how to be afraid_  
_before it gets too hard to believe, lay here with me  
before we count up what this will cost, before the present to the past is lost  
and all that's left is a faint memory, lay here with me_

stay here with me.

.

She really wasn't sure what she'd expected; she was weak from her brush with death, the night was pitch-black except for David's tiny keychain flashlight, and finding their way back to the clearing they'd been ambushed in seemed impossible.

But she couldn't turn back, they _couldn't_ go back, it wasn't… _right_. And maybe her parents guessed that there were things she wasn't saying or maybe they agreed with her about finding him or maybe they were just following her lead, but they didn't object or suggest that they return to the ship. It was something, at least.

"I think I've found the trail," Mary Margaret said quietly, leaning down; the ground was spongy and leafy and had swallowed most of their tracks, but there was some disturbance, and if she said it was a trail, then it was the best lead they'd had so far. "It should lead us to the clearing. And he should be there."

_No, he shouldn't_, Emma thought, choosing to be annoyed instead of afraid. _He shouldn't be in the forest at all, he should_ — she stopped herself.

"If nothing else, it's a place to start," she said, shrugging.

It seemed like it had taken much longer to reach the clearing the last time they'd been here: it was only an hour and change before they were there, where it had taken all morning last time. Hook had been keeping a slow pace, and in the grueling heat and humidity, neither of them had complained. She wondered if it was because he'd sensed something was off well before he'd mentioned it, or if he had some ulterior motive up his sleeve.

The forest hadn't managed to swallow up the signs of the fight in the clearing — the tracks were clear enough that even Emma could read them and the vague shape of a prone body wasn't lost on her, although she really wished it was.

But it was just a shape. He wasn't there.

"Did they break his sword?" David asked, picking up a thin shard of metal. She didn't remember that happening.

"No, the other way around," Mary Margaret replied carefully, apparently without emotion. Emma and David both glanced at her, and then at each other. Hook had broken Pan's sword? And still _lost?_ "It's not as difficult as you think," she went on, apparently seeing or predicting the look on Emma's face, "especially when one of the fighters is way stronger than the other. Pan's _all_ agility, Hook just has to hit him once."

"So why is Pan alive and Hook — " David started, but changed tack at the last minute, "not here?"

"He didn't follow through," Mary Margaret answered in a low voice. "He just got Pan out of the way long enough to get to — us."

"_What?_" Emma snapped, turning. "He could have _ended_ this whole thing, he could have finished that —_Pan_ off."

"If he'd done that, he wouldn't have gotten the antidote to you in time. Or at least he wasn't sure if he would," Mary Margaret said without looking up from inspecting the edges of the clearing, and she doubted it was because of concentration. Her heart was pounding in her throat and she didn't want to examine why, but before she could come up with some flippant response, her mother motioned them over. "I think I found something."

"What is it?" David asked, crouching down beside her.

"There's a lot of footprints leaving over there — " she indicated off to the right " — but here… It might not be anything, the ground is hard to read." She glanced at David like she had in Hook's cabin, but it was too dark for Emma to read it. "That's back toward the beach, and… well, he isn't _here_, so…"

"We follow," Emma said firmly, and her mother looked back at her, paused for a moment, then nodded.

Toward the beach. Something pricked at the back of her mind, something that made a gaping maw start to open in her chest, and she shoved it away before the thought could fully form. He'd been making for the beach. He'd —

It soon became apparent that they were indeed following his trail, and that he was in bad shape — occasionally, there was blood on a tree trunk, footprints staggering, a path that zig-zagged in the vague direction of the water, but indirectly, unlike a man who knew this forest like the back of his hand and had boasted that he could navigate it in his sleep.

Mary Margaret led them as they tried to follow his footsteps, which became increasingly erratic the closer they got to the edge of the forest. Finally, her mother tilted the flashlight up from the path and paused.

"There he is," she said quietly, and Emma stepped around to see what she was looking at: a disturbance on the horizon, didn't seem like much to her — but if Snow White said it was him, Emma was willing to bet she was right.

Both of her parents picked up the pace, foregoing the grueling tracking, but something between shock and a childish fear — _if I don't see it, it won't be real_ — slowed her down from the inside out, like her blood was thickening in her veins. She didn't want to get there. She didn't want to _know_.

She forced it down, clenching her jaw and speeding up, because she was _Emma Swan_ and she didn't shy away from harsh truths and she'd known this was likely from the start and she wouldn't be brought to her knees by _anything_, but especially not _this_.

_You're a remarkable_ — she shut down the memory.

Mary Margaret had been right; he was face-down right at the edge of the forest, where the sand met the grass, completely still. He didn't have his hook. She wasn't sure why that stood out to her.

It pricked at the back of her mind again. He'd been —

Her mother stopped, let out a breath, and glanced back to her in sympathy, but David stepped forward and rolled him over and, for a moment nothing happened.

David looked back at them, seemingly at a loss for words, and she clenched her jaw hard again against the thought trying to form, and finally failed. But then —

"He's _alive_," David breathed, like he didn't believe it. "It's weak, but he has a pulse, help me get him up."

Mary Margaret went forward, but Emma was rooted to the ground, throat dry.

The last time she'd felt like this had been when Cora's hand was in her chest, fingers tightening around her heart. The news that he was still alive hadn't silenced her thought, and it spilled out of her mouth before she could catch it.

"He was trying to come back," she said in a tiny voice. "He — he was _dying_ but he still — he was trying to come back…" _for me_.

No one ever came back for Emma.

Her parents paused, looking back at her for an uncomfortable moment as she tried to get a hold of herself. Mary Margaret glanced down at Hook and then back up at her.

"There's a lot that goes on between the two of you that the rest of us don't see, isn't there?" she asked, with no question.

"Yes," she replied, just as quiet, and ran a hand over her face. _Get a grip_, she thought. _You're not doing anyone any favors like this_.

"Okay, well, that doesn't make him any lighter," David said tightly, snapping her back to reality, as he pulled one of Hook's arms over his shoulder and struggled to stand. Emma shook herself and went over to join him, pulling his other arm over her shoulder as Mary Margaret pulled out her bow and nocked an arrow.

"_God_, he's heavy," she said, trying to pretend she hadn't cracked for a moment back there.

"Everyone is when they're unconscious," Mary Margaret answered evenly, and another blow hit Emma like a fist to the gut: how had she gotten from the forest to the ship?

There was only one possible way, and — on top of everything else — it made her throat lock up nearly enough to choke her.

She bit her tongue to ground herself and readjusted his weight on her shoulder.

.

It was _bad_, and even worse in better light than it had been at the beach.

He must have been there a while; the wound, already discolored from the poison, was covered in sand and had gotten infected. Emma was less of a stranger to cuts and bruises than she would've liked to be, and she knew a lost cause when she saw one.

David did too, giving her a glance with an uncomfortable finality, but Mary Margaret either didn't — unlikely — or held out more faith in his fortitude than they did.

"All right," she said firmly, looking around and pausing at Hook's wardrobe. "In the galley, there's a cabinet, he has a lot of different plants and herbs. I need to make a poultice. David, get the herbs. Emma, boil them in water."

She did so in a daze, hands shaking and breath still coming in short; she wasn't _dealing with it_ so much as she was blocking the entire thing out, detached from herself in the closest thing to coping she'd ever known.

When she returned to his cabin with a pot of steaming, sharp-smelling water, Mary Margaret had — it almost made her smile, to imagine his reaction — torn up one of Hook's shirts to make bandages. Emma watched in morbid fascination as her mother gingerly cleaned the wound and made a poultice, pressing it into the gash and wrapping it tightly around his middle.

It didn't feel like it would be enough. There was no way it would be enough.

"That's all we can do at the moment," she said, standing up and wiping her hands on her shirt. "Now, we just wait for the fever to break."

"I'll stay," Emma offered quietly, to the surprise of no one in the room. "You two have been up all night, get some rest. I'll stay."

When they were gone, she inspected the injury herself — Mary Margaret's bandages hadn't been wide enough or long enough to cover the entire web of discolored skin, dark with either early gangrene or horrible bruising or both — her hand hovering over it, still shaking violently.

There was no way a rag soaked in _herbal tea_ could save him.

She tried to call magic to her fingertips, but nothing came; maybe she was too scattered, maybe she was thinking about it too hard, maybe she just couldn't do this sort of thing, maybe… she choked on a sob deep in her chest.

It wasn't just that they had become friends, or something a little harder, and it wasn't just that he was in this state because he'd chosen her life over his own and to get back to her over the practical choice of staying still and conserving energy.

It was that, without him, they couldn't find Henry.

Without him, it was over.

"Don't do this to me," she choked, hitting his chest, voice rising with every word. "You can't _do_ this to me! You _said_ you would help me! You _promised_ you would help me. We can't do this without _you_, I can't — I can't get back to Henry without you."

He didn't move.

.

_You can't do this to me_.

He opened his eyes abruptly, startled, and sat up, looking around. His cabin was dark and quiet, and he couldn't figure out what had woken him.

"What is it?" Milah murmured from beside him, propping herself up on her arm.

"I…" he faltered, almost convinced that he'd imagined it. But then —

_You said you would help me_.

"Do you hear that?"

Her brow furrowed in confusion. "No," she replied, concerned. "What is it?"

"A woman, screaming…" he muttered, trying to place the voice. It was familiar, but only vaguely.

"No one is screaming," Milah said softly, sitting up fully and placing a hand on his shoulder. Was he hallucinating?

_You promised you would help me_.

Now he was sure he wasn't imagining it. It was too loud, and too desperate, and too _bloody tantalizingly familiar_ to be a figment of his mind. He stood, walking toward the door, thinking that maybe she was outside, on the deck, but what was she screaming about? He didn't remember promising anyone his aid.

Milah followed him, concerned. "Killian, I don't… hear anything."

He held up a hand, pausing her, and looked around the room like he could make her speak again; he was sure if she spoke again, he'd be able to place her voice, it was on the very edge of his mind — he _knew _her, he _knew_ what she was talking about, if he could just…

"No one is screaming," Milah said. "You… you must have had a nightmare, or something, just… come back to bed."

Something was _wrong_. And he couldn't put his finger on what.

_We can't do this without you_.

"Killian?" Milah whispered, concern obvious in her voice and face. He couldn't tell what color her eyes were — blue, green? He was looking at them, and they were both and neither and _something was wrong_. "Talk to me."

"This isn't real," he breathed, looking around again, focusing on his left hand. It _felt_ real, every bit of it felt completely natural and right, _too_ right to be anything but a dream. "I'm dreaming."

Milah sighed, pushing on his shoulder so he would face her. "You're dying," she admitted, tears forming in her eyes. "You… it'll all be over soon, just come back to bed. It won't hurt, you won't be alone, I'll be here and I'll _stay_ here. You've bled _enough,_ Killian, I've missed you so much. Just stay with me, _please_."

It would be so easy; he wanted _nothing_ more.

_I can't get back to Henry without you_.

Henry.

_Henry_, Bae's son, _Emma's_ son, taken from his mother to Neverland — and he had promised her they would find him. No one else could navigate the island like he could, without him, they'd be flying blind, if they could fly at all.

"I promised…" he said slowly, staring at the floor, sight unseeing, "I promised her I would help her find her son."

Milah's expression changed into something he hated to see, a slowly-descending grief. "Her son?" she said weakly. "Who?"

"Emma," he replied, still speaking slowly, trying to call up memories, but everything was fuzzy. Her voice was the only clear thing he could hear. "She saves people, it's what she _does_. But she can't save her son alone."

"You promised her you would help her," Milah asked, but it was hardly a question. He nodded distantly, feeling both intimately connected to the moment and thousands of miles away from it. "You promised," she repeated, voice dropping and catching on the last syllable. "You don't break promises."

"I've broken many promises," he replied, like it would help anything. "I'm — "

"_Captain Hook isn't welcome in my bed_," she snapped, cutting him off sharply and stepping away. "The man I love would _never_ break that sort of promise."

For a long moment, he couldn't speak, couldn't even think. He hadn't seen her in _centuries_, an amount of time that suddenly weighed on him like it never had before, all the years he'd dreamed of her face even as it slowly slipped away. It was still slipping even as he stood in front of her.

Milah would always be slipping away from him.

He took refuge in the only place he knew to go.

"It was _my_ bed first," he grumbled, trying to force a laugh, and she smiled and for a moment everything in his world was right.

"Yes, but I took over," she replied impishly, as though confiding a great secret. "Much like your ship."

"Oh, did you?"

"Oh, yes," she said, nodding and stepping a little closer again, smile becoming more of a playful smirk. "I was the one who was _really_ in charge, everyone knew it. You were just the figurehead. I needed someone to take the fall when something went wrong, didn't I?"

He laughed quietly, for the first time in what felt like eternity. It was so warm right here, her hand on his chest.

It would be so easy. No world had ever been kind to him but this one, this one here, the world he'd built with her. It was the only place he'd ever been content.

"You have to go," she said softly.

"Milah — " he started, but she cut him off.

"Would you choose a ghost over a living person? A memory over a second chance?" she asked, voice cracking.

"I'll always choose you," he said fervently, and she shook her head.

"You can't anymore. Killian…" she sighed, touching his face. "You don't even know if this is _real_. You've heard stories, people near death see and hear all sorts of things. Say it _is_ just a dream and you choose to stay, only to find out that you've given everything up for nothing."

"I've done that before," he muttered.

"And how did _that_ work out for you?"

He had no answer, so he didn't even try to justify it. "I can't go back there without you," he breathed. "I — I can't lose you _again_."

"There are worse fates," she replied, voice a little cold. "You could be a mother watching the last bit of hope of ever seeing her son again slipping away."

"So, I'm damned if I do and damned if I don't," he laughed cynically, but she shook her head again.

"Only if you don't," she said. "If you go, you can set things right."

"_This_ is right," he said tightly, and they both knew it was a lie.

"_This_ is giving up," she countered, voice small and soft and horribly _final_. "And Killian Jones doesn't give up."

_I'd give anything up for you_, he thought, but then… he wouldn't be the one paying that price, would he?

"You'll go," Milah whispered, a hand touching his face. "If you're this conflicted, you _have_ to go. Everybody dies," she added softly. "You'll get another chance at _this_."

"Then why do I feel as though I'll never see you again?"

"Goodbye," she said, answering without answering, her voice hoarse and little more than breath; her eyes were bright with tears, and _blue_, they were light blue, even lighter than his own, he remembered and it _hurt_. She leaned up and kissed him and he tasted salt on her lips.

"Milah — " he started, to say he'd changed his mind, he didn't _care_ about the cost, he _needed_ this, he needed _her_, he couldn't — but she must have known what he was going to say, because she took his face in both her hands and said, in a firm, absolute voice that almost didn't sound like her:

_Wake up_.


	5. nightmares by the sea

_all young lovers know why nightmares blind their mind's eye_  
_your rube is young and handsome, so new to your bedroom floor_  
_you know damn well where you will go_

_stay with me under these waves tonight_  
be free for once in your life tonight

.

The restaurant she'd picked was as fancy as she could reasonably pretend to afford; it was the sort with a string quartet and candles on the tables and a black-tie dress code. Reservations were taken at least a month in advance and the meal could be expected to cost more than the GDP of several third-world countries.

It was a sleaze magnet, as far as Emma was concerned — any man who enthusiastically agreed to meet her at a restaurant like this one was definitely either a criminal or a bore.

Besides, the food sucked.

She found the mark easily, a young boy with a round face and a hook for a hand, who laughed when she sat across from him as though she'd said some joke, and maybe she had; the conversation was white noise, the wine the color of old blood, the knives more dagger than butter. She reached out a hand for the boy to take and dance with her and when he took it, she noticed his rings.

Odd. Distinct.

Proof that she had been right.

When she turned back to him on the dance floor he was taller, older, a stranger's livid blue eyes in an old lover's face, a rough hand in hers and a dance that felt more like a fight. As she moved closer, his expression became condescending, and then threatening with a smile; when she touched him, her hand came back red with blood.

It was a gunshot wound, or it was a knife wound, and he was collapsing in her arms in a sheriff's station and he was falling into a black hole and he was laying in a forest clearing and he was laying on the edge of a beach and he was laying in a bed and each time she tried to save him and each time she begged him to stay and each time he fell anyway —

"I have to say, for all the myriad ways I've imagined you on top of me, Swan, _this_ I didn't expect."

She jolted up at the voice, stumbling backward and landing hard on the floor beside the bed, and shook her head to clear it.

"I don't remember falling asleep," she said blankly, before the meaning of her wake-up call sank in: Hook was, albeit with apparent pain, sitting up. And also smirking at her like nothing whatsoever had happened. She wondered vaguely if it had all been a dream — but no, his abdomen was still bandaged and —

The discoloration was gone.

"Surely you can come up with a better excuse than that," he drawled, but Emma didn't even care; she jumped up and pulled at the bandages to check the wound. "What — is that one of my shirts?" he asked incredulously. She ignored him.

It was gone. The wound was _gone_.

She glanced at her hands — the last things she remembered were trying to use magic to heal him, failing, getting frustrated, getting angry, getting sort of hysterical, hitting him a few times like_ that_ would improve the situation, and, and… maybe it worked? Her memories were all muddled from the stress and the lingering effects of the coma, and she'd had such a vivid dream that — while the haze of sleep was still clearing — she couldn't quite distinguish it from memory.

Had she ever danced with him? Had she found him on a beach?

Had she cradled him in her arms?

"It worked," she said, and he looked down at himself, the confusion finally setting in. "It _worked, _how did it work?"

He touched his abdomen slowly, then looked up at her, deep in thought. "What did you do?"

"I — " she started, blinking hard and trying to sort everything out. No, she'd never danced with Hook, she'd only fought with him in a swordfight that almost felt like foreplay. No, she hadn't cradled him in her arms as he died, that was Graham. Yes, she'd found him on a beach where he had fallen, trying to return to her like none of the others had. "You were… as good as dead," she breathed. "You were out there for… I don't know how long, it had gotten infected, there wasn't anything we could…" she trailed off, looking at her hands again.

"You have magic, yes?" he suggested, in a dangerously neutral voice. "Product of true love, and all that."

"I _know_ I healed you," she snapped, too strung-out to be relieved, "I just don't know how I did it." She ran a hand through her hair, frustrated. "If I knew how to control this stupid — _power_, this whole thing could have been avoided! I could have just — I don't know, set them on fire or something, instead of being stuck trying to fix everything now."

"Love is a shield," he replied with a wry look whose meaning she didn't want to interpret, "not a sword."

"Fat lot of good a _shield_ did then," she muttered darkly, running her hand through her hair again. She needed to wash it. She didn't know why she focused on that fact. "You almost _died_."

"Yes, but I didn't, did I?" he countered, still watching her strangely. "How did I get here?"

She sighed. "Well, you were… out there a while," she admitted, wincing, but it didn't seem to faze him. "Apparently, Gold refused to do anything, and Regina supposedly actually _did_ look, but couldn't find you, and my parents… well, they decided to stay with me."

He didn't say anything, but it hung in the air around them — Emma was the only one who actually cared whether he lived or died. Although Regina _had_ made noise about not completely trusting Gold's knowledge of Neverland and needing Hook to find Henry, but even she had only gone looking once before giving him up for dead.

"So, again, how did I get here?" he asked, in that same dangerously neutral voice; he could be hiding any emotion behind it, but mostly what she heard in it was bitterness, a vague regret.

"When I woke up, we went looking, me and my parents," she answered slowly. "It was pretty dark, and we had to track you all the way from the clearing — "

"You went into the forest at night?" he snapped suddenly, startling her. "After _everything_ I've warned you about? What the _devil_ possessed you to do that?"

She paused, a hundred answers coming to mind and then immediately flying away. "Why didn't you just stay at the clearing and wait for us to find you? Your chances were better if you stayed still, so why did you waste the energy?" she snapped back, but the questions were meant to be the answer she couldn't say out loud.

_I went back for you because you came back for me_.

"D'you have any idea how lucky you are to be alive?" he hissed, and it struck her that he was genuinely angry that she had gone looking for him at night. _Angry_.

"I saved your life," she cried, offended at his offense. "I _risked my life_ to find you!"

"And why the _hell_ would you do that?" he shouted. "After _everything_ I've done to keep you alive, you'd throw it away that easily? _Never_ risk your life to help _me_," he said in a low voice, just on this side of self-loathing.

Emma glared.

"I would do it for anyone else," she growled, but his expression didn't change.

"I don't give a _damn_ what you would do for anyone else, my life is _not_ worth yours."

And like that, they were at the heart of the matter, and at an impasse, because, ultimately, they were too damn similar: she could list at least three reasons off the top of her head why keeping Hook alive here, in Neverland, was more important than keeping Emma alive.

"You saved my life with that antidote, and stayed behind so I could get to safety," she said slowly. "And then you nearly died to get back to the ship. And you're gonna sit there and tell me that you're _worthless?_" He didn't respond, but he also didn't seem to be able to look her in the eyes. "No. You know what? No, I'm done with this," she hissed, causing him to look up at her in confusion. "No more sacrifices. No more people dying for anyone else, _none_ of it. We _all_ came here, and we are _all_ going back home _with_ Henry and I don't _care_ what I have to do to make that happen, but _I am not losing anyone else_.

"I don't give a _damn_ what you think you're worth," she went on sharply, hands clenching into fists. "You are _not_ going to die for me. I am _sick_ to the goddamn _death_ of people thinking they have to throw themselves on the sword to save me! All it's ever done is left me _alone_, and I'm _not_ putting up with any more of it!" She was shouting now, standing, tears she refused to shed in her eyes.

Everyone seemed to think that it was better to leave her than to risk hurting her, but she had thought that Hook — _Killian_ — of all people would have understood how wrong they all were. He had said he wouldn't have left Milah! He had said he would have stayed to fight with her, _for_ her! How could he —

For a long moment, he just looked at her with those impossibly blue eyes piercing straight through her, face unreadable. Finally, he said, quietly, "No more sacrifices, hmm? A tall order, that."

"I don't care," she replied, and her voice came out thicker than she liked. "Promise me," she started, and something in his face flickered like he'd been struck, "_promise me_ that you won't do it, you won't die for me, you won't get yourself killed to — to save me, or protect me, or — or any of it."

He was looking at her in the exact same way he had when they were climbing the beanstalk, just before he'd dropped that bombshell of _you don't want to abandon him like you were abandoned_ — open book.

"I should've lied to you," he murmured, startling her. "I should've said I would have left her."

"Probably," she answered quietly, because maybe he was right, maybe she wouldn't feel this strongly about this if she thought he would have done like Neal, like her parents, like August, like Graham, like everyone she'd ever loved, and chosen her over themselves and, because of that, her happiness. He probably shouldn't have told her that he'd never have a reason good enough to leave someone he loved.

"That's the heart of this, isn't it?" he asked softly. "You're desperate to find someone who will fight to stay with you and damn the cost rather than give you up to keep you safe." And then, even quieter, so soft that maybe he was trying not to be heard, "You'd rather die than be left alone again."

She clenched her jaw against the truth of his words, thoughts she'd never allowed herself to give voice to. "Yeah," she replied, after taking a moment to regain control of her voice. "Yeah, I would."

He nodded slowly, thoughtfully, eyes never leaving her face. It was like standing naked in front of an artist, nothing hidden and nowhere to retreat.

Open book.

They were too damn much alike. No one should be able to read her like this.

"I won't promise that I won't make that sacrifice if necessary," he said, and she felt like she was falling, but then he went on. "But I _will_ do everything in my power to ensure that it _isn't._ And I will not abandon you," he added softly, the crucial clause hidden in the footnote. "On any condition."

Trusting that promise was a dangerous gamble; every time she had, the person had broken it. But if anyone could understand the gravity of that sentence, it was him, and she doubted that he made promises like that off-hand. She _wanted_ to trust him, needed to trust him, _needed_ to believe that someone, somewhere would treat her like being with her was the most important thing in the world, that she was worth holding onto no matter what would happen because of it.

Emma needed someone to be selfish enough to _refuse_ to let her go.

And if anyone was that kind of selfish, it was Hook.

She was acutely aware of the hour, the place, the color of his eyes and the dark fear in her gut; she wanted to _run,_ out the door and back into her cabin where she was comfortably, if coldly, alone; she wanted human contact, physical and emotional, to reach out and touch him and let him in and let him stay.

It wasn't until she felt his stubble under her fingers that she realized she'd raised her hand to his face; his eyes closed and he tilted his head just slightly toward her hand.

It was just fingertips.

She'd never been so afraid of such a little thing.

.

He wondered if, this time, _finally,_ she would actually take the chance; she had believed in him when no one else had, this leap of faith was so much smaller.

Or maybe not. Trusting someone with a life was so much different than trusting them with a heart.

Killian knew he'd pushed a little too far when he'd said she would rather die than be left alone, knew he'd struck a little too close to the heart, but he hadn't been able to keep it in. He knew that feeling too well, and how agonizing it felt to still be left alone anyway.

No one should _ever_ have to experience that, but Emma least of all.

And his company wasn't ideal or probably even very good for her when they got right down to it, and she deserved better, but for some reason she thought him worth her time and he'd gone too long in the dark to be selfless and push her away to save her from him.

But he didn't expect her to take the chance on him now, not when things were such a wreck and they were both recovering from near-death experiences, so he was surprised when her lips brushed against his.

He recovered quickly, sliding his hand into her hair, around the back of her head, and standing so he was only inches away from her and pulling her closer. One of her hands flattened against his chest, right over his heart, as the other ran over the side of his face, thumb brushing against his cheek as he tilted his head to deepen the kiss.

It would only last a moment.

She would run. The _instant_ one of them broke the kiss, she would run because he had gotten too close too fast and she had been burned too many times to play with fire again. His fingers tightened in her hair, maybe a little desperately, because he _hated_ the fact that she was going to run away from him again and he needed this moment to last.

And run she did, just like he knew she would: she only lingered for one brief second after she pulled away, and then the atmosphere shattered when she opened her eyes.

She looked up at him, searching his face, but either she didn't like what she found or she hadn't wanted to find it in the first place, because in the next second she was turning away and his hand was slipping from her face. "I — should get some rest," she said hastily.

He almost made some quip about a bed being right here, but she was the wrong sort of uncomfortable to be helped with humor. "Aye," he replied instead. "You've had a long night."

She glanced at him from the door and opened her mouth to say something that might have been an apology or a plea, but thought the better of it and left before he could see through her again; still, she hadn't run quite fast enough.

She had run because she felt it too.

If she didn't care for him like he did her, she would have stayed and let things progress further, played on the sexual attraction between them rather than the emotion, because giving him her body would have been safer than giving him her heart. If the two didn't go hand-in-hand, she would have stayed. Instead, she had run, left him cold and alone, blood itching with what might have been.

But at least it meant she would come back.


End file.
